I'm way more excited for the editor, I love map editors for games, and was curious is Reverie Worlds had any more information they'd care to give out regarding it, it's capabilities, it's ease of use, etc...?

Skassss1

04-12-2011 02:21 PM

editor

It seems like a alot of work to me.

Alex Walz

04-12-2011 03:43 PM

We will put out some tutorials and hopefully release the editor to beta testers later on, but right now we aren't releasing any new information as the editor is currently be worked on.

With that said, I've tried out several prominent RTS editors, and DOF's is by far my favorite. By easily tweaking attributes such as scale, transparency, hover, pitch, etc. you can create just about anything - from usable custom staircases to breach-able custom walls. I think once the editor is released, testers will be very surprised to see what went into some of the detail work that looks like a solid object. I won't get into detail, but it's an incredibly efficient editor as well, allowing designers to save and load templates to reuse, copy and paste large segments of environment, toggle effects without any scripting to create something entirely new, and pretty much whatever else you can think of!

We will put out some tutorials and hopefully release the editor to beta testers later on, but right now we aren't releasing any new information as the editor is currently be worked on.

With that said, I've tried out several prominent RTS editors, and DOF's is by far my favorite. By easily tweaking attributes such as scale, transparency, hover, pitch, etc. you can create just about anything - from usable custom staircases to breach-able custom walls. I think once the editor is released, testers will be very surprised to see what went into some of the detail work that looks like a solid object. I won't get into detail, but it's an incredibly efficient editor as well, allowing designers to save and load templates to reuse, copy and paste large segments of environment, toggle effects without any scripting to create something entirely new, and pretty much whatever else you can think of!

Yeah, I had seen those videos a long while ago, when they were first released. And it appears that mapping in general has been answered before as well, but what about thinks like custom skills? Custom spells? Custom units? Triggers? Camera control? Unit control, as it relates and pertains to animations? Cutscene capabilities? These are all the things I'm kinda dying to know... :)

Brian Shingles

04-13-2011 05:46 AM

Those topics will be covered in more detail in the tutorials we put out once the Editor is released, so I will just briefly summarise a few things that have been mentioned elsewhere.

Triggers are written in the Lua scripting language which is, in my opinion, one of the easiest languages to learn.

Custom skills/spells can be created through triggering and you can do things such as summon units, fire projectiles or damage units in an area with a visual FX.

Custom units (i.e new models) is more a modding thing, but from the Editor you can change a unit's stats, name, scale, etc.

You can tell a unit to perform a particular animation available to it using the Perform function.

Cut scenes are fairly simple to make. In the Editor switch from Edit Mode to Cinematic mode. Use WASD and arrow keys to position the view you want. Press m to place a Camera Marker, type in a ScriptName for the camera when prompted. Repeat until you have enough cameras. Return to Edit Mode and create a trigger to use these cameras.

Here is an example of the code needed for a simple cut scene where a Guard welcomes you to a town when you move your Hero close enough:

Code:

local choice
Trigger.GuardWelcome=function()
if Objects.Hero:DistanceTo(Objects.Guard)<256 then -- Only do this once the Hero is close enough to the Guard
CurMap:FadeOut(0.75) -- Fade to black
Wait(0.75)
Objects.Hero:Idle() -- Make the Hero go Idle
CurMap:BeginCinematic() -- Start cinematic mode
CameraTrackLoop_New(-20,{Objects.GuardCam1,80,Objects.GuardCam2,80,Objects.GuardCam1,80}) -- Set up a simple 20sec loop, cameras zoomed in to 80% using camera marker objects you named GuardCam1 and GuardCam2
CurMap:FadeIn(0.75)
Objects.Guard:Perform(32,20,-1) -- Tell the guard to perform his talking animation
choice = CurMap:PlayChoiceDialog(1,nil,"GUARD: Welcome to our town, stranger",nil,"- Thank You","- Bugger off") -- Save the player's choice of response to the Guard's dialogue for use later
UIfxDialog()
Wait(0.5)
CurMap:FadeOut(0.75)
Wait(1)
CameraTrackLoop_Stop() -- Stop the cameras from looping
CurMap:EndCinematic() -- Exit cinematic mode
CurMap:FadeIn(0.75)
Wait(0.75)
DisableSelf()
end
end

If you don't want a looping camera, you can set either a static camera or a moving camera